14 Women in AI You Should Follow on Twitter

Hey, you know that I’m big supporter of women in tech. I’m actually partnering with Women Who Tech for the 4th Women Startup Challenge at Google and focused on women-led ventures in artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR). Note: if you haven’t applied you have until December 12th to get your applications in. The winner will receive $50,000 as a cash grant, and $15,000 in probono legal services by global law firm Paul Hastings, LLP. All finalists will join join Samsung for a special startup showcase and reception featuring the 10 finalists.

With changing tech, it’s important to note the folks who are really doing good work in emerging fields, and social media’s a great way to keep up and promote that work.

My team and I have compiled a list of 14 women in AI (in no particular order) who you should be following on Twitter:

Jodi Goldstein is the Managing Director of the Harvard Innovation Lab. She has 20 plus years of experience as a startup cofounder, executive, and investor, and is currently focused on helping new ventures and startups develop their ideas and find funding.

Yao Zhang is the CEO of Roboterra, a company that allows kids to make and design their own robots. Zhang earned her Ph.D. in Education Economics at Columbia University before working for McKinsey and Co. and the Soros Foundation. She was awarded the Best 10 Global Citizen Award by the U.S State Department for her work in education.

Nahid Alam is the founder of Litehouse, a voice platform for connected home products. She has been a mentor for wearable/IoT startups at Intel on the reality show America's Greatest Makers. She currently leads the control system development at a renewable energy startup. Previously, she was a Sr. Design Engineer at Intel and has spoken at various conferences including TEDx, Google panel, etc. During her college years in Bangladesh, she built and sold a mobile messaging startup.

Samantha Payne is the Cofounder and COO of Open Bionics, an award-winning startup based in the UK that develops bionic hands for amputees. Payne was a finalist for the Entrepreneur of the Year at the Women Business Awards. Her company has received lots of recognition for its pioneering work.

Star Cunningham is the founder and CEO of 4D Healthware, a company that combines emerging technology in a single platform to monitor a person's health and wellness, in the hopes of preventing the onset of disease. Before venturing into the startup world, she previously worked at BP, Ameritech and IBM. She is on the board of HBA Chicago Chapter, an organization dedicated to the advancement of women in healthcare.

Eugenia Kuyda is the Cofounder and CEO of Luka, an app that allows people to find restaurants by speaking to an intelligent bot. She is also a Cofounder at Replika, where she is hoping to develop chatbots that mimic an individual’s personality using artificial intelligence.

Jana Eggers is the CEO of NaraLogics, a company that uses synaptic intelligence to generate context relevant recommendations for businesses. Eggers has held top executive positions at Intuit, Blackbaud, Lycos, Sabre, and Spreadshirt.

Fei-Fei Li is a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford, working on artificial intelligence. Her work focuses on image recognition, learning, and language processing. Her research at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) has helped create more intuitive and intelligent systems, capable of recognizing scenes from still images and dictating scenes.

Marie desJardins is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. desJardins runs the the Multi-Agent, Planning and Learning Lab (MAPLE) at UMBC, where she conducts research on machine learning and artificial intelligence in the hopes of using AI to develop solutions to real world problems.

Tessa Lau is the CTO and Chief Robot Whisperer at Savioke, a company that builds elegantly designed robots that work in human environments. She has a background in machine learning and computer science from the Cornell University and the University of Washington but she is primarily focused on how to use robotics for consumer needs.

Daphne Koller is a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford and a Cofounder of Coursera, an online education platform. Koller is currently the Chief Computing Officer at Calico. Her main area of research is in artificial intelligence and how it can be applied to healthcare systems.

Stephanie Mueller is an Associate Professor in the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department beginning January 2017. Her main areas of research focus on human computer interaction, where she develops software and hardware. She is a frequent speaker at universities and labs such as Harvard, Stanford, Microsoft Research and Disney Research.

Julie Shah is an Associate Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. Her main area of study is in robotics, where she concentrates on human-machine interactions. She’s been named one of the top 35 Innovators Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review.

Jia Li is part of the Computer Science Division at Stanford. She was formerly the head of research at Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc, before being hired by the new Google Cloud Machine Learning Group. Li is an expert in AI, specializing in helping machines recognize objects in images. Before joining Snapchat she led the Visual Computing and Learning Group at Yahoo! Labs, where she was given the Super Star award, the highest award at the company.

Do you know anyone I should be following? Please comment below to share your favorite women in AI, and we’ll add ‘em to the next version of the list.

One Comment

Hi Craig,
Great list! Can you suggest men or women who are using AI to develop strategies to adapt to the rapidly changing nature of conflict? The Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego, in partnership with the One Earth Future Foundation, is hosting its second California Consensus for Peace through Technology in April, looking for ways to connect conflict/peace researchers with technologists and policymakers for more effective conflict prevention. Thank you, Diana